Panel hosted at the International Pragmatics Conference 2027 (IPC20) in Helsinki 27 June–2 July 2027

Call for Abstracts

The panel seeks to advance our understanding of the nature of information that is ‘taken for granted’ in an utterance. Linguistic phenomena related to such information, most prominently presuppositions and conventional implicatures, received different analyses, e.g. as projective or not-at-issue content. Current debates center around the questions (i) whether a single analysis can capture all characteristics of this heterogenous set of phenomena; (ii) how they connect to information-structural distinctions like focus-background or topic-comment; and (iii) how such information enters and is represented in common ground. To address these questions, the panel aims at bringing together researchers from different theoretical camps with the growing field of experimental pragmatics.  

Potts (2005) analyzed conventional implicatures, e.g., the content expressed by parentheticals, appositives and expressives, as not-at-issue, drawing a distinction between the asserted proposition (at-issue content), which is typically taken to be an answer to a question under discussion (e.g. Roberts, 1996/2012; Tonhauser, 2012; but see Koev (2018) for different conceptions), and a range of other entailments and presuppositions conveyed in an utterance (not-at-issue content). Since Potts’ seminal work, characterising the difference between at-issue and not-at-issue content sparked great interest in theoretical as well as experimental research (e.g. Tonhauser, 2012; Murray, 2014; Stevens et al., 2017; Stolterfoht, 2026). One line of research drew connections between projective content and not-at-issueness, stating that diverse phenomena can be subsumed under the premise that they all project because they do not contribute at-issue content themselves but rather serve as its background (e.g. Roberts et al., 2009; Simons et al., 2010). Despite this uniformity, recent experimental findings highlighted variability and gradience in at-issueness and projection (e.g. Tonhauser, 2018; Barnes & Ebert, 2023). Only recently, research focused on factors determining the observed variability by systematically testing the influence and interplay of lexical meaning, prior beliefs and at-issueness (e.g. Degen & Tonhauser, 2025). Moreover, first attempts have been made to implement the effects of such factors in probabilistic pragmatic models (Scontras & Tonhauser, 2025). Another important desideratum is a model of how different types of content are processed incrementally (e.g. by introducing a second processing stage linked to a second layer of meaning designated to not-at-issue content; e.g. Axel-Tober et al., 2024; Czypionka et al., 2025), and also how the incremental left-to-right nature of language processing affects core properties of projection (e.g. asymmetric filtering; Mandelkern, et al., 2020; Kalomoiros & Schwarz, 2024; Tonhauser & Degen, to appear).

To shed further light on the issues sketched above, we invite contributions related to topics such as:

• Links between (not-)at-issueness, projection, and information structural concepts, and their representation in common ground
• Factors influencing the processing of projective or not-at-issue content
• Theoretical and empirical approaches to the gradience of at-issueness
• Differences/similarities of (conventional) implicatures and presuppositions 

Submission

Abstracts should be anonymous and max. one A4 page (regular font size) plus one additional page for references and figures. Submissions and can be made at: https://ipra2027.exordo.com/

• Deadline for submission: 08 October 2026
• Notification: early November 2026
• Workshop: 27 June – 02 July 2027 

Please note that a membership in the in the International Pragmatics Association is required to make a submission. For more information on the submission procedure visit: pragmatics.international/page/CfP2027

Invited Speakers

• Judith Tonhauser (University of Stuttgart)
• tba

Organizers

Katrin Axel-Tober, Jennifer Hüge, Fabian Schlotterbeck & Britta Stolterfoht
SFB 1718 “Common Ground”, University of Tübingen

Selected References

• Axel-Tober, K. Schlotterbeck, F. & Stolterfoht, B. (2024). Common-Ground Management: Polyfunctional Particles in Processing and Diachronic Development. Poster presented at XPrag.it, Venice. osf.io/jnarz
• Barnes, K., & Ebert, C. (2023). The information status of iconic enrichments: Modelling gradient at-issueness. Theoretical Linguistics, 49(3–4), 167–223. doi.org/10.1515/tl-2023-2009
• Czypionka, A., Reimer, L., Kharaman, M., & Eulitz, C. (2025). Processing at-issue and non-at-issue content: Evoked and induced brain activities reveal early and long-lasting differences. PLOS One, 20(5), Article e0321953. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0321953
• Degen, J., & Tonhauser, J. (2025). Projection inferences: On the relation between prior beliefs, at-issueness, and lexical meaning. Glossa Psycholinguistics, 4(1), 1–34. doi.org/10.5070/G6011.20798
• Kalomoiros, A., & Schwarz, F. (2024). Presupposition Projection From ‘and’ vs. ‘or’: Experimental Data and Theoretical Implications. Journal of Semantics, 41(3–4), 331–372. doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffae011
• Koev, T. (2018). Notions of at‐issueness. Language and Linguistics Compass, 12(12), Article e12306. doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12306
• Mandelkern, M., Zehr, J., Romoli, J., & Schwarz, F. (2020). We’ve discovered that projection across conjunction is asymmetric (and it is!). Linguistics and Philosophy, 43(5), 473–514. doi.org/10.1007/s10988-019-09276-5
• Murray, S. E. (2014). Varieties of update. Semantics and Pragmatics, 7, 1–53. doi.org/10.3765/sp.7.2
• Potts, C. (2005). The logic of conventional implicatures. Oxford University Press.
• Roberts, C., Simons, M., Beaver, D., & Tonhauser, J. (2009). Presupposition, conventional implicature, and beyond: A unified account of projection. In N. Klinedist & D. Rothschild (Eds.), New Directions in the Theory of Presupposition. European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information.
• Roberts, C. (1996/2012). Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics and Pragmatics, 5, 1–69. doi.org/10.3765/sp.5.6
• Scontras, G., & Tonhauser, J. (2025). Projection without lexically-specified presupposition: A model for “know.” Proceedings of Sinn Und Bedeutung, 29 (2024): 1431–1448. doi.org/10.18148/SUB/2024.V29.1286
• Simons, M., Tonhauser, J., Beaver, D., & Roberts, C. (2010). What projects and why. Proceedings of SALT 20, 309–327. doi.org/10.3765/salt.v0i20.2584
• Stevens, J. S., de Marneffe, M.-C., Speer, S. R., & Tonhauser, J. (2017). Predicting projection from rational use of prosody in manner adverb utterances. Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society Annual Meeting 2017. hdl.handle.net/2078.5/216290  
• Stolterfoht, B. (2026). Adverbial modification and (non-)at-issue content. In A. Konietzko & S. Winkler (Eds.), Information Structure and Discourse in Generative Grammar (pp. 315–336). De Gruyter. doi.org/10.1515/9781501514425-010
• Tonhauser, J. & J. Degen (to appear). I don’t know if naturalness ratings distinguish presuppositions from nonpresuppositions. Did Mandelkern et al. 2020 discover that they do?. Linguistics & Philosophy.
• Tonhauser, J. (2012). Diagnosing (not-)at-issue content. Proceedings of SULA 6, 239–254.
• Tonhauser, J., Beaver, D. I., & Degen, J. (2018). How Projective is Projective Content? Gradience in Projectivity and At-issueness. Journal of Semantics, 35(3), 495–542. doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffy007